Parenting Strategies for Raising Resilient Kids — Dr. Becky Kennedy, Good Inside

1. 0:00 – 0:41

   Start

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:00

      Honestly, almost always when I'm asked a question, my answer is almost always reframing the question. How do I say no without someone getting upset? I mean this with love. It's just a bad question.

   2. TFTim Ferriss0:10

      It's a bad question, yeah.

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:11

      It's an impossible question.

   4. TFTim Ferriss0:12

      Yeah.

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:12

      How do I say no and tolerate someone being upset is a great question.

   6. TFTim Ferriss0:15

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:15

      Love that question.

   8. TFTim Ferriss0:16

      Yeah.

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:16

      So I'll shift to that. Usually, when we feel stuck in life, it's because we're asking the wrong questions, right? Not because we don't have the answers.

   10. TFTim Ferriss0:22

       100%. You can get, also get a great answer to the wrong question.

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:25

       Yes.

   12. TFTim Ferriss0:25

       And that can lead you astray. [upbeat music]

2. 0:41 – 3:50

   The power of repair.

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:41

      Well, let's start with what popped into my head.

   2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:44

      Great.

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:44

      And we'll just keep rolling with that thread.

   4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy0:47

      Love it.

   5. TFTim Ferriss0:47

      And see if it goes somewhere interesting. [laughs] If it's a dead end, I'll get us out of the dead end. But I wanna talk perhaps about your TED Talk on the power of repair. Why do you think this struck a chord with people, and what resonated with people from that?

   6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:03

      Classic example is you yell at your kid for something, right? So I'll use this example, which is different than the one in my TED Talk, 'cause it also leads to some, you know, common questions. So my kid's stalling in the morning. I'm like, "I gotta get my kid to school," because also when I drop my kid at school, I have to get to work, and my kid's late, I'm late, the whole thing. We're all so rushed. And my kid is saying, you know, I don't know, whatever they're saying. "I'm not going to school today. You can't make me go to school. I'm not putting on my shoes. You put on my shoes." And you're thinking like, "I have an eight-year-old. Like, they have to put on their shoes," right? And then we get to some crescendo moment where as a parent, and I'll say me, myself, 'cause I have this too, I just, I just yell-

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:42

      [laughs]

   8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:42

      ... and scream at my kid, "What is wrong with you? You don't do anything. You're eight years old. You're never gonna amount to anything in your life if you can't put on your shoes," or-

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:49

      [laughs]

   10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:50

       ... you know, "You're so selfish. You're gonna make me late. You turn me into a monster. Why can't you listen the first time?" We say this thing.

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:58

       Mm-hmm.

   12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:58

       Depending on our kid's temperament, they react in different ways. If they're kind of in the more people-pleasing type, that immediately stops them. They're like, "Oh, no, my parent's mad at me."

   13. TFTim Ferriss2:07

       Mm.

   14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:07

       You know, "I'm gonna be good, mostly just because I'm, I really need to see that they reflect that I'm a good kid. I, like, need that." If you have another temperament kid, they use this as a way of like, "Oh, you wanna fight? I'll show you a fight." And they're like, "I am not putting on my shoes," you know?

   15. TFTim Ferriss2:21

       That was me.

   16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:21

       Right. [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss2:22

       [laughs]

   18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:22

       That is my third kid. Love him. What order are you?

   19. TFTim Ferriss2:26

       I'm first.

   20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:26

       You're first.

   21. TFTim Ferriss2:27

       Mm-hmm.

   22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:28

       Okay.

   23. TFTim Ferriss2:28

       But I was, uh, [laughs] a pretty defiant little kid-

   24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:32

       Right

   25. TFTim Ferriss2:32

       ... at points.

   26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:33

       And so then you get through the moment. You get through it. A- and then I think after drop-off, there's this, like, immense heaviness as a parent.

   27. TFTim Ferriss2:41

       Mm-hmm.

   28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy2:41

       And you're cycling through different things that, again, whatever your voice is, might be your own voice, or it's probably the voice you've internalized [laughs] from your own upbringing in terms of how people would've responded to you if you were your kid in that moment, but it's some version of blame. It's either blame in or blame out. It's either, "I'm an awful parent. Why can't I stay calm?" and, "Why can't I just get through the morning?" And then that usually cycles with, "I have an awful kid, and my kid's a sociopath, and they're gonna go to jail, and they're never gonna amount to anything." And either way, you're blaming, where repair, right, would be saying to your kid at some point, "Hey, I screamed at you earlier. That probably felt scary," and this will be the kind of maybe, maybe the start of something controversial, "It's never your fault when I yell, and I'm working on staying calmer, so even when I'm frustrated, I can use a calmer voice. Like, I'm sorry." That would be a repair. I'm kind of going back to a moment that felt bad, kind of like reopening that part of the chapter. I'm taking responsibility for my behavior. I'm giving my kid a story to understand what happened, and I'm kind of talking about what I would do differently the next

3. 3:50 – 8:00

   “It’s never your fault when I yell at you.”

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy3:50

      time.

   2. TFTim Ferriss3:50

      All right. This is great grist for the mill, and part of the reason, and we talked about this a little bit before recording, that I was excited to have you on and have a conversation is that the tools you're talking about really apply everywhere, and they're echoed by a lot of folks people would not necessarily associate with parenting, like Jocko Willink, [laughs] Navy SEAL commander, Extreme Ownership. And I wanna use that. There are many other examples that I could give where I feel like what we will discuss in our conversation can be applied many different places, many different dojos for very similar tools and toolkits. Okay. With that said, I suspect one line where people maybe got stuck, and you know exactly what I'm gonna say, is, "It's never your fault when I yell at you."

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy4:43

      Yes.

   4. TFTim Ferriss4:43

      All right. Part of me loves that because, just to invoke the great name of Jocko again, who did his first ever podcast, first ever interview, on this podcast 100 years ago, when you own things, you give yourself a degree of agency.

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy4:59

      Yes.

   6. TFTim Ferriss4:59

      Right? But also overly blaming yourself can be the flip side of maybe taking on excessive responsibility for other people's actions and feelings and so on, meaning sort of codependent or otherwise. So I heard everything you said, but I suppose like some listeners, I was like, always, never, these absolutes are very strong words.

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy5:20

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TFTim Ferriss5:22

      Why say that particular line?

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy5:24

      Yeah. And when I share a script, to me it, it's often words that are representative of kind of principles.

   10. TFTim Ferriss5:30

       Mm-hmm.

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy5:31

       I never like to get too stuck on words. I actually gave those words an example in part because I think it does bring up a lot of questions. But I never want someone to hear this and think, "Okay, I gotta write down that exact word."

   12. TFTim Ferriss5:40

       Right.

   13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy5:40

       In general, take responsibility for your actions. Give your kid a story. Say what you do differently the next time.

   14. TFTim Ferriss5:45

       Mm-hmm.

   15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy5:45

       And I actually would hope anyone listening would say, "I think I have my own brand of that." Amazing. That's better for you and your kid-

   16. TFTim Ferriss5:50

       Mm-hmm

   17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy5:50

       ... than my brand. So with that in mind, it's never your fault when I yell. Here's why I think that's powerful, even if you don't say it to discuss and really think about. The way we react to our kid Yes, has to do with the situation in front of us, but we actually react to the set of feelings in our own body combined with the circuitry we have to manage those feelings.

   18. TFTim Ferriss6:16

       Mm-hmm.

   19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy6:17

       And I think the biggest thing to think about is that circuitry, those skills we have to manage emotions literally predated our kids' existence.

   20. TFTim Ferriss6:25

       Sure.

   21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy6:25

       That was there so far before them. Now, when my kid doesn't listen and the morning is delayed, I feel frustrated, and that feeling is definitely co-created with my kid. Separating frustration from my ability to manage the frustration are two really different things.

   22. TFTim Ferriss6:46

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy6:46

       And telling a kid basically, "You make me yell, you turn me into a monster," is actually holding your kid responsible for your set of skills to manage your feelings. And the other reason, and then I'll be quiet for right now, that I think it's so powerful is I think about my son, I don't know, it could be my daughter, whatever, he's married one day, let's say, and he has some partner, and I don't know, he had a really bad day at work. And he comes home, and for some reason I'm at his house visiting, and his partner is like, "Oh man, I, I forgot to get toilet paper from the store." And then he sits down for dinner and maybe his partner, like, ordered him the wrong thing. I don't know, and he yells at her.

   24. TFTim Ferriss7:22

       Mm-hmm.

   25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy7:23

       And I hear him saying, "Well, if you just got toilet paper and ordered me the right thing, like, I wouldn't be yelling at you."

   26. TFTim Ferriss7:31

       Mm-hmm.

   27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy7:31

       And I picture the cringe. I'm like, oh my God, that's like the creepiest thing. Like, seriously?

   28. TFTim Ferriss7:35

       And you're like, did I install that software?

   29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy7:36

       And then we hear ourselves say to our kids all the time, "If you just listened the first time, I wouldn't have yelled."

   30. TFTim Ferriss7:42

       Mm-hmm.
4. 8:00 – 9:38

   What does it mean to be a “good” parent?

   1. TFTim Ferriss8:00

      All right. So there are many different branches off of this-

   2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:04

      Mm-hmm

   3. TFTim Ferriss8:05

      ... that we could explore. Let's maybe back up or zoom out, choose your favorite metaphor, and perhaps you could just in your, I suppose, framework or worldview what it means to be a good parent. Could you define this?

   4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:23

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TFTim Ferriss8:23

      Or just speak to that?

   6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:25

      Yeah.

   7. TFTim Ferriss8:25

      And then we can use that as a sort of a foundation from which we can launch into a bunch of other stuff.

   8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:31

      I should have a really solid answer to that question by now, but I-

   9. TFTim Ferriss8:34

      Fortunately, we have a lot of time. [laughs]

   10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy8:36

       Okay. Maybe part of what I struggle with is I think we probably think about that word or that term good parent as like what I'm doing on the surface as something observable. Where I think a core principle that I think about is actually separating kind of who you are in terms of your identity, which is not observable, from what you do and your actions, which usually is observable, separating those two. I mean, but I think a good parent probably sees parenting as a journey of self growth and discovery as much as they see it about anything related to your kid's growth.

   11. TFTim Ferriss9:06

       Mm-hmm.

   12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:06

       So I think that's number one. Number two, I think a good parent really activates curiosity over judgment in a situation with their kids, and a good parent probably can put into action the idea that really being the sturdiest leader for your kid involves equal parts very firm boundaries and parental authority as it does kind of warm, validating connection.

5. 9:38 – 12:40

   Activating curiosity over judgment.

   1. TFTim Ferriss9:38

      You mentioned curiosity over judgment. Now, when people hear this word judgment, they probably-

   2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:44

      Mm-hmm

   3. TFTim Ferriss9:44

      ... assume that as a negative judgment, but a judgment could also be something like good job.

   4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:50

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TFTim Ferriss9:50

      Right? So what would curiosity look like in place of either a negative or a positive judgment?

   6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy9:57

      I think the words good job have gotten a lot of, like, press where a parent's like, "You know, so say good job. Say good job. That's not gonna do damage to your kid."

   7. TFTim Ferriss10:03

      [laughs]

   8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy10:04

      I think there's a lot we can unpack there. There's deeper principles, right, of like, oh, what do kids really need when they have accomplishments?

   9. TFTim Ferriss10:10

      Yeah, I like how you zoom out because it's, it's not whether you're using, like, the crayons or the oil paints or the acrylics or, or charcoal. You have to learn the fundamentals of, like, drawing, and to do that you need to learn how to see things. So it's like returning to those first principles.

   10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy10:24

       That's right.

   11. TFTim Ferriss10:24

       Right.

   12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy10:24

       That's exactly right. So I think judgment, it can be positive, but I would say in parenting, actually in any relationship, it's just so easy to see someone's behavior that feels bad or feels less than ideal, and we just activate our judgment about the behavior. And usually when you judge behavior, what you're unconsciously doing is you're seeing behavior as a sign of who someone is. That's why you're judging it. This person's such a selfish person, right? My friend didn't call me back. Oh, they're so selfish, right? Or my kid keeps hitting on the playground even though I say no hitting, and then we, we don't even realize. We go into like, "What's wrong with my kid? Why do I have such a bad kid?" You know, "My kid is never gonna figure things out. I'm a bad parent." You just see something on the surface and you kind of feel like you know everything about it. I actually think, I never thought about that, that's really what it means to judge something. I see something that's probably part of a larger story, and instead I think it's the whole thing.

   13. TFTim Ferriss11:20

       Mm-hmm.

   14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy11:21

       To me, the opposite of judgment in any relationship is curiosity, and I think curiosity is when you see something and you just wonder about it. To me, that's like one of the best words for parents, wonder. I wonder why my kid is hitting. As soon as you use the word wonder, you're unable to judge because you're thinking and kind of conjuring up this bigger picture. Now, where parents usually go when they hear me say that is like, "Oh, so it's just okay my kid's hitting?" And there's this, again, judgment we even do there where-

   15. TFTim Ferriss11:51

       You must deal with so many people with so many strong opinions. [laughs]

   16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy11:54

       Well, part of it is I get it. I have so much empathy for parents and even understand their skepticism of our approach because we have had shoved down our throat this very, very behavior first, punishment first. We call it discipline. It's actually a joke to me. In any other area of life, if we allowed CEOs and coaches to talk to the people in our organizations like we think parents do to kids, and then we call it disciplined, it would never fly and those people would be fired. But we've had that shoved down our throats, and so anything new always feels uncomfortable, and these are very new ideas, right? But I think about with other areas even with kids, if your kid isn't learning how to swim, right, you teach them how to swim, and nobody says, "Oh, you just think it's okay that they're not swimming?" It's like a we- You'd be like, "What? I'm just teaching them how

6. 12:40 – 17:41

   Alternatives to saying “Good job” as a confidence builder.

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:40

      to swim."

   2. TFTim Ferriss12:40

      Could I pause for one second?

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:41

      Yeah.

   4. TFTim Ferriss12:41

      All right. I have a bunch of thoughts on this good job thing.

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:44

      Okay.

   6. TFTim Ferriss12:44

      I know that-

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:45

      Let's do it

   8. TFTim Ferriss12:45

      ... I like your potential replacements for that. Could you just-

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:50

      Great

   10. TFTim Ferriss12:50

       ... just to give some people-

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:50

       Yeah

   12. TFTim Ferriss12:51

       ... a concrete example, like what might you say instead of good job?

   13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:54

       A kid comes to us, and let's say, I don't know, a young kid brings us a, a painting.

   14. TFTim Ferriss12:59

       Mm-hmm.

   15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy12:59

       And we could say, "Oh, good job. That's amazing," right? Or let's say an older kid brings us some paper they wrote and they got a good grade, and you say, "Good job."

   16. TFTim Ferriss13:06

       Mm-hmm.

   17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy13:06

       Okay, again, good job does not damage kids.

   18. TFTim Ferriss13:08

       Mm-hmm.

   19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy13:08

       But I think in those moments we want, as parents, to kind of double down on building our kids' confidence. That's usually the kind of goal we're optimizing for. So then to me the question is, is that like the best of all options, or at least should we have other tools in our toolbox? And the thing that really builds kids' confidence is learning to gaze in before you gaze out. We're in a world that is priming us to gaze out before we gaze in, kind of like, "Look what I've done, and can someone in the world tell me it/I am good enough?" That's basically [laughs] the world we live in, and it makes you very empty and very fragile, very, very anxious.

   20. TFTim Ferriss13:45

       I'm talking about social media?

   21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy13:46

       Social media.

   22. TFTim Ferriss13:47

       I'm just [laughs]

   23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy13:47

       Yeah, everything. I mean, so many things, right?

   24. TFTim Ferriss13:49

       Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

   25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy13:49

       Definitely social media, right? And if I think about this moment, and again, I'm often very long-term thinking, but my kids over and over show me things.

   26. TFTim Ferriss13:58

       Mm-hmm.

   27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy13:58

       What's gonna help them down the road? Well, I know when you're in your 20s and 30s, what's really helpful down the road is when you produce something, maybe it's art, maybe it's a project, being able to give yourself some estimation of that before others do is very helpful-

   28. TFTim Ferriss14:12

       Mm-hmm

   29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy14:12

       ... to your whole self-concept, and protective of anxiety and depression. I think I did a good job on this project. It's true, I didn't hear back from my boss yet, but I'm a little anxious about what my boss is gonna say, but the fact that someone didn't tell me something isn't going to spiral me.

   30. TFTim Ferriss14:26

       Mm-hmm.
7. 17:41 – 21:12

   Making kids happy vs. building capability.

   1. TFTim Ferriss17:41

      What is your opinion of parents focusing or viewing their job as making their kids happy? Optimizing for happiness.

   2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:50

      Hmm.

   3. TFTim Ferriss17:50

      Right? Because who's gonna poo-poo happiness, right? I mean, it sounds, sounds-

   4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:53

      I will. I will.

   5. TFTim Ferriss17:56

      I- [laughs]

   6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:56

      [laughs]

   7. TFTim Ferriss17:56

      All right, let's wade into the deep waters.

   8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy17:57

      It's something people say as a throwaway comment. Like, my husband always jokes-

   9. TFTim Ferriss18:01

      Mm-hmm

   10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:01

       ... like, you're out, like, at dinner parties and someone's like, "You just want your kids to be happy, right?" And he'll look at me and think, "Becky, please don't ruin this-"

   11. TFTim Ferriss18:06

       [laughs] Becky, don't take it

   12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:07

       ... "perfectly nice moment." Don't take it.

   13. TFTim Ferriss18:08

       Don't take the bait. [laughs]

   14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:09

       And I always do.

   15. TFTim Ferriss18:09

       Yeah, yeah.

   16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:10

       Um. No, I very much would say a parent's job is not to make a kid happy. And again, because we struggle to hold multiplicity, people will say, "You want your kids to be unhappy?" No, I d- I definitely don't try to make my kids unhappy, right?

   17. TFTim Ferriss18:24

       Can I just stop to say, you're not, you're not gonna like this maybe, but like why are people so stupid and just like wanna fight? It's like obviously you don't mean that.

   18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:31

       We think in these extremes. We see that in all areas, and holding two things as true or holding nuance is increasingly hard in this world, which is why it's even more important, right?

   19. TFTim Ferriss18:41

       Yeah.

   20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:41

       To kind of have some of these ideas in our homes. You used the word optimizing, and I think about that a lot. So zooming out, again about kind of Good Inside in general, is I would say our parenting approach is just very long-term greedy.

   21. TFTim Ferriss18:53

       Mm-hmm.

   22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:53

       Because I just think my kids are gonna be out of my house for way longer than they're in my house.

   23. TFTim Ferriss18:58

       Mm-hmm.

   24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy18:58

       They're gonna choose whether they want to be in a relationship with me way longer than they're locked into a relationship with me, and however high the stakes feel when they're 8 and 10 and 17, we know the stakes in life just get higher.

   25. TFTim Ferriss19:12

       Right.

   26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy19:13

       And so when we think about making our kids happy, what we're actually saying is, "I am prioritizing my kid's short-term ease. I am making my kid's life easy and comfortable in the short term." And what ends up happening, not when you do that a couple times, but as a pattern, is you actually narrow the range of emotions kids believe they can cope with.

   27. TFTim Ferriss19:38

       100%, for sure. True in partnerships too. True in-

   28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy19:42

       Yes, anywhere

   29. TFTim Ferriss19:43

       ... a lot of relationships.

   30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy19:44

       You end up having adults who are remarkably anxious. So prioritizing happiness for kids leads to adulthood full of a ton of anxiety.
8. 21:12 – 26:29

   A pilot metaphor for sturdy leadership.

   1. TFTim Ferriss21:13

      What does it mean to be a sturdy leader?

   2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:19

      Ooh.

   3. TFTim Ferriss21:19

      Yeah.

   4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:20

      I love the word sturdy. Like, there's certain words I love because even though I'm a psychologist and I have a lot of words to say, I actually think very visually, and to me, the words that make sense, like, evoke an emotion that I can access, and to- the word sturdy just does that for me.

   5. TFTim Ferriss21:35

      Mm.

   6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:35

      [laughs] And again, I think sturdy leadership is what we want in a CEO. It's what we want in a partner. It's what we want in a coach. It's definitely what we want in a pilot.

   7. TFTim Ferriss21:42

      So does that mean reliable, dependable?

   8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy21:46

      I think there's a couple ways. I think it's a leader who is equally boundaried as they are connected to you. They're actually equally as connected to themselves, "What do I want? What are my values? What are my limitations?" as they are able to connect to you. "Oh, you might be different, but I'm able to hear and understand your values and wants and feelings." And to me, the way that can get kind of operationalized as a kind of really set of skills is you know how to set boundaries, and I think most people get boundaries completely wrong, so I know how to set and hold boundaries, and at the same time, I'm able to connect to and validate other people's emotional experiences. Those are the two pillars of sturdy leadership.

   9. TFTim Ferriss22:27

      Could you paint a scenario for us? [laughs] You have great scripts, and people come to you for scripts. Doesn't have to be a verbatim script, but could you just walk us through a hypothetical situation that exemplifies someone being sturdy in this way?

   10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:45

       Yes. I think sometimes the best way to do it is actually in this pilot metaphor. Can I do that first?

   11. TFTim Ferriss22:49

       Let's get into the pilots.

   12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:51

       Okay. Are you actually a pilot? It wouldn't surprise me.

   13. TFTim Ferriss22:53

       I'm not a pilot. I've landed a plane, but I'm not a pilot. [laughs]

   14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:57

       Sully. Right there.

   15. TFTim Ferriss22:58

       Yeah. [laughs]

   16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy22:58

       I got Sully. Okay. [laughs] You're many things.

   17. TFTim Ferriss23:00

       Yeah, yeah, no.

   18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy23:01

       Okay.

   19. TFTim Ferriss23:02

       I'm definitely not the sturdy pilot you want. [laughs]

   20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy23:05

       So I'm definitely not a pilot. You're a passenger on a flight, and there's, let's say, a lot of turbulence, and you're very scared, and maybe even you look around and, like, everyone's pretty scared. I think there's three versions of a pilot that you might hear come over the loudspeaker, and I actually think they perfectly exemplify three different versions of parenting. So here's pilot one. "Everyone stop screaming. You're making a big deal out of nothing, and I can't focus, and you ruin everything, and you're just gonna all have your frequent flyer miles taken away if you keep screaming." Something like that.

   21. TFTim Ferriss23:35

       Not super reassuring.

   22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy23:36

       Not reassuring.

   23. TFTim Ferriss23:37

       [laughs]

   24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy23:38

       And the invalidation there as a passenger for me almost makes me worried, does the pilot not know it's turbulent?

   25. TFTim Ferriss23:45

       Mm.

   26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy23:46

       And oh my goodness, me screaming and being scared is enough to make the pilot kind of freak out at me? Like, that actually doesn't feel good. It feels like I was contagious to the pilot-

   27. TFTim Ferriss23:58

       Mm-hmm

   28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy23:58

       ... and they couldn't handle the situation. Okay, that's pilot one. That's like when we say to our kids, you know, "If you don't listen to me the next time, you're losing dessert. You're so rude. You know, you can't hit your sister, and you ruin every family vacation," whatever we kind of just scream at our kids and we threaten things that, by the way, we never follow up on, and we just dole out punishment because we don't really know what to do. That's pilot one. Pilot two is almost the opposite extreme. [sighs] Like everyone's scared, and it is, you're right, it is really turbulent, and I don't know, I'm just gonna open up the cockpit door, and if any of you know how to pilot the plane, just come on in and take over

   29. TFTim Ferriss24:36

       [laughs]

   30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy24:36

       And at this point, you're no longer scared of turbulence, and you're just terrified that this person is your pilot, right?
9. 26:29 – 29:04

   Role confusion.

   1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy26:29

      of trouble.

   2. TFTim Ferriss26:30

      What do you mean by role confusion?

   3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy26:32

      I think every parent wants to do a good job, but, like, over and over when I talk to parents and their kids are tantruming all the time, and they're rude, whatever it is, I'll say to them, "What is your job in this situation?" And all of them say, "I have no idea." But again, I go to the workplace, and I imagine someone at Good Inside, like as a company showing up, and me as CEO saying, "Do a good job today," and them saying, "But I don't have a job description." I'd be like, "Do a good job." They say, "Becky, I cannot do a good job if I don't know what my job is, and I need to know what that person's job is so I know what they're doing versus what I'm doing." That's totally fair. So I think as a parent, if you don't know what your job is, you can't do a good job. And what role confusion, what I mean by that is, number one, you don't have clarity on your job. Because I think any parent listening to this, if you think about any tricky situation, my kid's rude, my kid's not sleeping, my kid's lying, what is my job in this situation? If you don't know that with clarity, that's at least your starting point. And often, as parents, we ask our kid to do our job for us.

   4. TFTim Ferriss27:33

      What would you offer as a sample job description?

   5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy27:39

      Almost always our jobs are those two things, setting boundaries. Boundaries are limits we set. They're decisions we make, and sometimes, especially when our kids are younger, they're truly, they're physical. They're stopping my kid from running into the street or picking my kid up and leaving the park because they're having a meltdown even though my kid doesn't wanna be doing that. Those are boundaries. The other side is always seeing the good kid under the bad behavior and connecting to my kid in that way. And here's a good example. I hear all the time, "My kid doesn't listen to anything. My kid doesn't listen to anything I say." For example, my kid is jumping on the couch right near a glass table. I'm like, "Get off the couch. Stop jumping on the couch," and they don't listen. I say, "Stop jumping on the couch," and then I say, "If you don't get off the couch by the time I count to three, I'm gonna take away your dessert," and then I don't really take away the dessert 'cause I don't want a meltdown later that night. Like, this is so common.

   6. TFTim Ferriss28:32

      Sounds like a mess. [laughs]

   7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy28:32

      Right, it's a mess. So number one, I would say, "What is your job?" Again, I think they would say, "I'm doing my job. I'm trying to get my kid off the couch." But you're asking your kid to do your job for you. You're watching your kid not able to make a good decision. This is your kid who you like. And instead of helping them be safe, you're asking them to do something they're showing you they can't do.

   8. TFTim Ferriss28:55

      So what would you potentially do?

   9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy28:57

      Great. So let's start... I, I can't even answer that without saying what's a boundary.

   10. TFTim Ferriss29:00

       Okay.

   11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:00

       'Cause that parent I would say is not setting boundaries, and this is true separate from

10. 29:04 – 32:08

    Defining boundaries.

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:04

       kids.

    2. TFTim Ferriss29:04

       Is it fair to think about boundaries as rules you follow consistently? Or is... I guess there's probably more nuance to that.

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:10

       Um, I mean, I guess I think it's fair to say, but I would say it's not the most actionable, helpful definition.

    4. TFTim Ferriss29:15

       Okay.

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:16

       So-

    6. TFTim Ferriss29:16

       All right, great

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:16

       ... to me, my definition of boundaries, boundaries are things you tell people you will do, and they require the other person to do nothing.

    8. TFTim Ferriss29:25

       Mm.

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:25

       That's a really important dual kind of definition. It's something I tell, let's say it's my kid, although it could be your colleague or anyone. It's what I tell my kid I will do. That's an assertion of my power. It's what I will do. I'm not letting my day be ruined by my four-year-old not listening. I just like myself and my kid too much to do that. So a boundary is something I tell my, tell my kid I will do, and its success requires my kid to do nothing. Get off the couch. Get off the couch. I'm not telling my kid what I will do.

    10. TFTim Ferriss29:54

        [laughs]

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy29:55

        And it requires them to do something to be successful. It's a complete giving away of your power.

    12. TFTim Ferriss30:01

        Right.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy30:02

        Versus, and this surprises people because too often I think Good Inside, we get lumped in with, like, soft, permissive parenting. This is 0% permissive. Setting a boundary and validating my kid's feelings, being sturdy, would sound like this. Once I tell my kid, "Hey, get off the couch," they don't. I'd say, "Look, I'm gonna walk over to you, and if by the time I get there you're not off the couch, I will put my arms around you, I'll pick you up, I'll put you on the floor because my number one job is to keep you safe, and it's just not safe to, you know, jump near that glass table. Okay." Now, in my own house when my kids were younger, I'd go over to my kid, and people have this illusion, so you do this, and then your kid just gets off the couch. No. No, they don't. You do this, you get over there. If you have a normal child, they're gonna look you in the eye and keep jumping up and down, not because they don't respect you, just 'cause they haven't learned how to control their impulses yet. So then I would do my job. I would put my arm, "Okay, I'm gonna pick you up now." I'm gonna put them on the ground. They will not look at you and say, "Thank you for your sturdy leadership."

    14. TFTim Ferriss31:03

        [laughs]

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy31:03

        "You're so amazing. I really needed that. Thank you for see-" No. They will scream. But actually when you understand this kind of parent's job visual, you set a boundary. Every time you set a boundary, your kid's gonna get upset until they get a little more used to it, but that's because when you set a boundary, you're basically just telling your kid you can't do something you want to do. Humans feel upset when they're stopped from doing things they want to do.

    16. TFTim Ferriss31:27

        [laughs]

    17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy31:27

        All the time. They get upset, and it actually allows you to do the second part of your job. So I pick my kid up, they scream, "No, put me down. I hate you," whatever they say in this state, and then I can say, "Ugh, you really wanna jump on the couch. You really don't wanna jump on the floor. It's so boring." Again, when I say that, doesn't mean for one instant that I let my kid back on the couch, what they will try to do, and my hands will be ready to block them. "Nope, I'm not gonna let you do that." This is where I think it really is this revolutionary idea in any relationship. I can be equally strong and equally connected to someone else, and that's true sturdiness and really doing our job.

11. 32:08 – 37:20

    How parenting becomes a two-way mirror for growth.

    1. TFTim Ferriss32:08

       I wanted to ask you about perhaps another facet of doing your job, but you can't trust everything you read on the internet.

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy32:13

       Ooh.

    3. TFTim Ferriss32:13

       So I will ask this question in the following way. This is from a participant in one of your workshops.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy32:23

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss32:23

       And they described your approach as one of, quote, "coaching a nervous system to cope with being a human in the world," end quote. Is that a fair description?

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy32:32

       Of what we do?

    7. TFTim Ferriss32:33

       Yeah. Or would you say, "Mm, not quite. Close, but a miss"?

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy32:39

       I mean, what I love about that is it captures something that's so much more true than why most people initially come to us. They come to us because their kids are having tantrums, their kids aren't sleeping, their kids are being rude, their kids are being defiant, and what they end up getting is they themselves get rewiring to be sturdier in the world while they learn how to give that to their kids from the start.

    9. TFTim Ferriss33:07

       Mm-hmm.

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy33:07

        So I think that that's close.

    11. TFTim Ferriss33:10

        Referring back to what I mentioned earlier in this conversation, it's really simpatico with so many other things that I've been exposed to. It seems like with Good Inside and the child is, yes, you're interacting with a child. Yes, one of the objectives is to become a better parent and be more connected and be a sturdy leader, and your child is also a mirror and a medium through which you get to work on yourself because if you're dysregulated, guess what? [laughs] Like how can you expect your kid-

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy33:42

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss33:43

        ... to be regulated? And I mean, some people are gonna hate this because I recognize that human children are not dogs, but for instance, there's a great book. There's so many terrible books on dog training, but one which has a terrible title unfortunately called Don't Shoot the Dog is written by Karen Pryor. She took clicker training from marine mammals and brought it over to shaping behavior with dogs. So clicker training is when you click to reward certain behavior or getting directionally moving towards the right behavior, and then you're able to sort of time mark that and offer a reward. But the reason I'm bringing this up [laughs] is not that you should use clicker training with humans. I've tried that as a joke. It generally lands really poorly. But rather, she reinforces over and over again why most dog problems are actually owner problems, right? And you need to be consistent. If you are trying to shape behavior, you also need to be very, very consistent with, and I know this might open up some debate, but rewards, generally not punishments. In her approach, it's almost all positive reinforcement. And when I see, for instance, I mean, I... She's not here today, but I have a very well-trained dog, and I have some tolerance for the monotony of dog training, and I find it very soothing actually. But when I see dogs that are misbehaving because they were never sort of trained early on, and then their owners are freaking out, maybe hitting them, being really abusive-

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:21

        Oof

    15. TFTim Ferriss35:21

        ... I'm like, "That is an owner problem. That's not a dog problem." And I have to imagine there are probably similar examples in parenting. I mean, there must be.

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy35:31

        My oldest son said something once that I don't think he meant to be as profound, but it's something that sticks with me a lot, and it goes kind of problem blame where we were in a situation in the car, and essentially my husband thought my son had closed the door, and he didn't, and kind of backed out the car, and the car got caught in the garage with the door. Anyway, and he kind of said something to my son, and my son just said, "It's not my fault." And my husband said, "So it's my fault?" And my son said, I think he was [laughs] I don't even know, eight at the time. He goes, "You know, sometimes bad things happen, and it's nobody's fault." And I think for parents, this is always true. Like when your kid is really struggling, is it a kid's fault? Is it a parent's fault? I feel like we're obsessed with fault. Why is it anybody's kind of fault? I always say to parents, "It's not your fault your kid's struggling the way they are. Fault's just not a useful framework. You are the leader of your home, and if all the associates in some big company, you know, were struggling, I don't think you would start an intervention at the associate level. Leadership would say, 'Okay, it's not our fault, but like we're the leaders, so what are we gonna do?'"

    17. TFTim Ferriss36:41

        Yeah.

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:41

        And, uh, yeah.

    19. TFTim Ferriss36:42

        It's not your fault, but it's your responsibility.

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy36:43

        It's your responsibility, exactly. And the other thing is I think when we become parents, it's not just like our kids' problems are our fault or our problems, but I see a much more hopeful framework where- Through your kids, if, if you wanna take this on as a journey, you will learn everything you ever needed to know about yourself, your own childhood. By the way, you watch your partner's childhood play out. You're like, "Oh, that's how you were raised. I see it now"

    21. TFTim Ferriss37:07

        [laughs]

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy37:07

        And there's so much learning, right? And that's hard. Learning is hard. Growth is hard. And it is kind of this amazing opportunity. Rather than my kid's problem being my fault or my problem, you can be like, "There is an opportunity for everyone here."

12. 37:20 – 40:04

    The MGI (Most Generous Interpretation) approach.

    1. TFTim Ferriss37:20

       What is the MGI?

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy37:22

       Hmm. I love a good acronym.

    3. TFTim Ferriss37:24

       [laughs]

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy37:25

       So when I was in my clinical psychology PhD program, I'd always hear these amazing people speak, and I'd go with my, you know, classmates and be like, "That was amazing," and they'd say, "Yes, it's amazing. But what are we gonna do about it?" And I'd be like, "What do you mean? Just think about it." I really don't love thoughts without actions. [laughs] I just like to know how, okay, well, what do I do? How do I action on this great idea? And to me, this idea that your kid, all of us, we are good inside identities, separate from behavior, it's a very powerful idea, but I don't find it as actionable as I would like. So to me, the way to action on that idea is this idea of MGI. And to me, this is something in all of our relationships, even if it's just after the fact, at the end of the day, we can ask ourselves. And MGI just stands for most generous interpretation. What is the most generous interpretation I can come up with of my kid's behavior, of my colleague's behavior, of my teammate's behavior? Because I think what happens naturally is we default to the LGI, the least generous interpretation.

    5. TFTim Ferriss38:26

       Hmm.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy38:26

       So you see your kid, they lie to your face once. "No, I didn't take Kit Kats from... I didn't eat before dinner," and they have, like, chocolate all over.

    7. TFTim Ferriss38:32

       [laughs]

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy38:33

       And it's just so easy. You just go to, like, "My kid is a sociopath. My kid doesn't respect me." You're like, "Well, my kid ate a Kit Kat," and, like, all of a sudden, this is a matter of, like, respecting me, right? Or my kid is hitting. They're in a hitting stage. And again, we just go to, "My kid is never gonna have any friends. My kid is clingy. They're always gonna be the loser at parties, and they're never gonna be able to converse with anyone." And then what happens and why the LGI is so almost dangerous is it makes us do this fast-forward error. We take a situation today, we fast-forward to what that means about our kid, I don't know, 20 years from now, and then we respond in the moment based on all of that fear rather than what's just going on in the moment. And MGI really shakes us out of that, right? What is the most generous interpretation of why my kid would lie to my face? Whenever I ask parents that, it's amazing. Their countenance goes from, like, so angry at their four-year-old to, like, they're like, "Oh, they're probably scared of my reaction. Okay." And then eventually to, like, "What do I do?" But the mindset we're in in life determines the interventions we use. And I can promise you, as long as you're in an LGI mindset with your kid, with your partner, with your colleague, zero productive things can happen. And then we say, "What do I do? What do I do?" The answer is to stop doing from that mindset and ask yourself a different question to get in a more productive mindset, and then intervene from there.

13. 40:04 – 44:08

    Biggest challenges in parenting.

    1. TFTim Ferriss40:04

       So we're meeting for the first time. We have a lot of mutual friends, it turns out, but I have this suspicion that we have a fair amount of shared DNA, just in terms of how we operate, [laughs] as you were mentioning the thoughts as being interesting, but not that interesting if there's no action to apply these thoughts. I thought that might be a useful place for a segue. So I read that you're a planner and that your husband gave you some advice around planning. Is this enough of a cue to prompt-

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy40:40

       I don't know. It's not.

    3. TFTim Ferriss40:41

       Oh, you don't? Okay.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy40:42

       I don't know. I need more.

    5. TFTim Ferriss40:43

       All right. All right. So this is from Romper.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy40:46

       Okay.

    7. TFTim Ferriss40:46

       Romper.com.

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy40:47

       Yep.

    9. TFTim Ferriss40:47

       And so this is the journalist speaking.

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy40:51

        Okay.

    11. TFTim Ferriss40:51

        "I tend to catastrophize, to jump to the worst-case scenario when we're struggling with a difficult phase or unpleasant pattern, but I tell myself to have faith to believe that we will work ourselves to a better place." And then, this is, I believe, quoting you, "I'm guessing you're a planner," she responds. "I'm a planner, too. My husband said to me over the pandemic, 'I never thought of planners as pessimists.'"

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy41:10

        Yes.

    13. TFTim Ferriss41:10

        "But the opposite of planning is not catastrophe. It's being able to say to yourself, 'I'll figure it out no matter what happens.'"

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy41:16

        Mm-hmm.

    15. TFTim Ferriss41:16

        "The opposite of catastrophizing isn't predicting the good. It's saying to yourself, 'I'll find my feet. I'll be able to cope with what comes my way.'" So this is a, a roundabout way of asking, what historically or currently have been your biggest challenges in parenting?

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy41:33

        Yeah.

    17. TFTim Ferriss41:33

        That could be with your kids. It could be with your husband, could be other, but what comes to mind?

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy41:41

        It's a great segue, and that is true, where my husband said to me when I, you know, during the pandemic, I kind of started this whole part of my career, and I kind of burst into these creative thoughts where I became much less organized, and I had all this creativity. And at the same time, the pandemic was very hard to me, and this relates to one of the things that's hard for me in parenting and one of the things I talk about a lot. So people probably think I'm good at it, but I talk about it all the time 'cause I'm bad at it. That's why anybody talks about things all the time. Where he's like, "Wow, I didn't marry, like, a very logical optimist. I think I married, like, a creative pessimist." [laughs]

    19. TFTim Ferriss42:14

        [laughs]

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:15

        He's like, "Look at this."

    21. TFTim Ferriss42:16

        Creative pessimist.

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:17

        You know?

    23. TFTim Ferriss42:17

        Yeah.

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:17

        I think I'm short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic. And what I mean by that is I love a plan. I love an action. People outside of me will be like, "Becky is one of the most productive people I know," and I think that's probably true on the surface, but the driver of that is I'm incredibly anxious when I want to do something and haven't yet done it, that the way I relieve my own anxiety is just to do it so it looks productive, but it's probably just an anxiety coping skill. And what that means is when I want to do something or there's a struggle and I can't yet action on it, I have a really hard time.

    25. TFTim Ferriss42:57

        What would be an example of that?

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy42:59

        I mean, all during COVID in terms of I think one of the reasons I probably And so many people would say, "Oh, you were there for me in COVID, and I produced so much content," is I just needed something to do because the pause of that, the slowness, the, like, there's not a lot to do to fix this, you just kind of have to be in it, is really, really hard for me. Another example of that is I think about my kids, and they're now 7, 10, and 13. You know, each of them, they go through these stages and, you know, maybe some social shifts or harder stages, and I think I talk so much about sitting with feelings and not fixing them.

    27. TFTim Ferriss43:34

        Mm-hmm.

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy43:34

        Because my first instinct, for sure, is to just go in and make it better, make them happy. And that is something, again, the parallel process of learning to just sit with my own feelings. All of us who can be prone to action, there's, like, morality to it, like, we kind of, like, it's, like, a better thing, and it can be better in some circumstances, but sometimes the best thing to do is just sit with it, and that is something I think I have worked on in myself even, you know, through working on it with my kids.

14. 44:08 – 50:06

    Recommended reading for someone with kids in their life.

    1. TFTim Ferriss44:08

       Hmm. In addition to your book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want To Be, which has been recommended to me by multiple close friends, even though I don't have kids. [laughs] In addition to that, what other books or modalities do you think could be helpful for someone in relationship and/or with kids? And for instance-

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:31

       Hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss44:31

       ... a few come to mind, right? There's a book called Conscious Loving. I think it's by Gay and Katie Hendricks. I always mix up the Hendricks because there are two pairs. There's Nonviolent Communication.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:43

       Mm-hmm. Great book.

    5. TFTim Ferriss44:44

       There is, I think I mentioned Extreme Ownership, which it does actually overlap [laughs] in certain ways.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:52

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss44:53

       You have, I believe, a quote from Dick Schwartz-

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:58

       I was gonna say

    9. TFTim Ferriss44:59

       ... Internal-

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy44:59

        Love Dick Schwartz

    11. TFTim Ferriss45:00

        ... IFS, Internal Family Systems.

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy45:02

        Mm-hmm.

    13. TFTim Ferriss45:02

        For people interested, I did a live session with him on this podcast.

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy45:05

        Yep.

    15. TFTim Ferriss45:05

        [laughs] It got very interesting very, very quickly. Fascinating practitioner, really useful system. Anything else come to mind? Any books, resources, anything at all that you would kinda add to that list?

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy45:19

        Yes. The three books, I guess, that are top of mind would be, yes, Dick Schwartz's No Bad Parts, or just his Internal Family Systems book. I mean, he knows... I've been very influenced by him and when I, when I work with adults in therapy. And to me, some of the best gifts and privileges kind of we can give our kids is helping them understand the parts of themselves and talk to their parts as kids. Like, when I hear my kids do that, I always think, "This is gonna help you more when you go to college than anything you learn [laughs] in high school."

    17. TFTim Ferriss45:48

        Yeah.

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy45:48

        It's crazy. So IFS. Eve Rodsky's book, Fair Play-

    19. TFTim Ferriss45:54

        I don't know that

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy45:55

        ... is, I think, so powerful, especially for parents who feel like they're the default parent, meaning they're the parent who maybe their partner takes the kid to soccer, but realizing they have to be signed up for soccer, thinking about what soccer, where to sign up, getting them the shin guards, getting them the new cleats that actually fit and are the ones they want. That idea of mental load, mental load of parenting is so intense. She really helps put words and a system to that, that I think makes a lot of parents say, like, "Oh my God, I'm not crazy. Like, this is a thing. This is a system."

    21. TFTim Ferriss46:29

        Why is it called Fair Play?

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy46:31

        Because it's the idea that if you have a partnership, that you don't have to distribute tasks 50/50-

    23. TFTim Ferriss46:37

        Mm-hmm

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy46:37

        ... but that the mental load has, like, a disproportionate impact on your stress and overwhelm.

    25. TFTim Ferriss46:44

        Hmm.

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy46:44

        And there needs to be more fair play amongst teammates-

    27. TFTim Ferriss46:47

        Mm-hmm

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy46:47

        ... in that way.

    29. TFTim Ferriss46:48

        Got it.

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy46:48

        And then this might sound like an odd recommendation, but Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things.
15. 50:06 – 53:59

    Advisable prerequisites for singles who aim to build a family.

    1. TFTim Ferriss50:06

       For people out there who are single but would love to have a family, what advice might you give them in terms of positive indicators for people who will be leaning towards some of the abilities-

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy50:22

       Hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss50:22

       ... and self-awareness and skills that make for a sturdy-

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy50:27

       Yeah

    5. TFTim Ferriss50:27

       ... leader parent, right? So just like if, if-

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy50:30

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss50:30

       ... I was like, "Hey, here's my dossier of, like, 10 prospects," and you're like, "Well, let's, like, ask a few questions and figure the early-

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy50:37

       It says sturdy leadership on the, on the list. [laughs] One second, I'm assessing you for sturdy leader-

    9. TFTim Ferriss50:41

       So I'm looking for, I'm looking for sturdy leader

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy50:42

        ... pre-sturdy leadership. [laughs] Um-

    11. TFTim Ferriss50:46

        And they're like, "Ooh, dirty talk." Yeah. [laughs]

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy50:48

        Seriously. Seriously. Talk about that one in our next episode. So a couple of things. To me, again, being a sturdy leader has nothing to do with being a parent, and while I think it's actually through parenting, and this is the beauty, that people have such in their face the work they need to do that they can access that, you're right in pointing out how amazing if you're doing some of this work before, right?

    13. TFTim Ferriss51:11

        Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy51:12

        So I think number one, again, curiosity over judgment to me is very, very key for any sturdy leader at any age, right? So when you're dating people, you know, when you're friends with people, you know, and in general they hear something that's happening for you and they're more curious than they are judgmental, "Oh, I did this thing. I had this awful interview." "Oh, what happened? Oh, tell me about that." Or you even hear that they approach their own life that way, right? Where people who have really intense, rigid judgments about anyone, they tend to be that way with others 'cause they tend to be that way with themselves, and then that's gonna be activated, you know, probably with kids, right? That's number one. To me, I think tolerance for inconvenience-

    15. TFTim Ferriss51:56

        Hmm

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy51:57

        ... is like a really important part of sturdy leadership, especially with kids.

    17. TFTim Ferriss52:00

        How might you suss that out? I mean, you can go on, like, a traveling trip and see how they handle baggage being delayed or whatever. I mean, you can try to engineer it that way, but any other way?

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy52:10

        I think it probably comes up in our life all the time. I don't know how much we're always optimizing for convenience versus like, "Yeah, let's take the subway. It'll take us a little longer, but it's easy enough," or-

    19. TFTim Ferriss52:20

        Hmm

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy52:20

        ... "Oh, there's a wait at a restaurant. I really wanna go there. Okay, you know, can I tolerate that?" Or, "Oh, I really wanna go. I was just invited to this party. It's gonna be so cool. I already committed to my friends and this kind of, not, quote, cool, but random group dinner, and you know what? I'm gonna miss that party. This is, like, my, my best friend's, [laughs] you know, birthday party," whatever it is. 'Cause I think that's one of the things with parenting that people don't talk about enough. It's massively inconvenient. That's really the word I think about-

    21. TFTim Ferriss52:45

        [laughs]

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy52:45

        ... all the time. I show up, I'm trying to grocery shop, my four-year-old's having a tantrum, and it's just, that's inconvenient that I've spent-

    23. TFTim Ferriss52:52

        Yeah

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy52:52

        ... 10 minutes now dealing with that and I wanna be able to finish my, my grocery shopping. I also think in a relationship, the ability to be curious about your experience and not see that as any reflection on their own experience, which is really the ability to hold multiplicity. Like, when you say to a partner, "Oh, I was really upset you didn't text me back," probably whoever the partner is, their first reaction might be like, "Oh, I, I wouldn't have been upset in that situation," or whatever. "Are you saying I'm a bad person?" Or we get very defensive because we find someone's experience of us to be counter of our experience of ourselves. And if we're very secure and sturdy, we'd be able to say to ourselves, "Okay, I can know what my intention was, and I'm not threatened by the fact that Tim was upset that I didn't, you know, text him back." I can be curious about it and be like, "Oh, tell me more about that. Oh. Oh, I see that." And I don't see that as a threat to myself.

    25. TFTim Ferriss53:49

        Right.

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy53:49

        That to me is probably the ultimate kind of indicator, 'cause that happens all the time-

    27. TFTim Ferriss53:54

        Sure

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy53:54

        ... with our kids.

    29. TFTim Ferriss53:55

        Oh, yeah, I can only imagine. [laughs]

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy53:58

        [laughs]
16. 53:59 – 59:33

    Setting boundaries with grandparents and dealing with different parenting styles.

    1. TFTim Ferriss53:59

       I would love to ask you a few questions that one of my employees sent. She has a-

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy54:05

       Let's do it

    3. TFTim Ferriss54:05

       ... she has a toddler. In every instance that I've seen, she tries very hard to be however she defines it, a good parent, right? And I think maybe this conversation will lead her to think about the definition differently. But she sent a bunch of very good questions, and we [laughs] probably won't have time for all of them. She, uh, really took my question and my producer's question seriously, I should say. So she has eight questions, but I wanna hop n- to number eight.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy54:33

       Okay.

    5. TFTim Ferriss54:33

       This is about grandparents.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy54:35

       Hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss54:36

       "Does Dr. Becky have any good tips on parenting our parents? Our, quote-unquote, 'boomer parents' often use guilt and shame as teaching methods, which we don't love or approve of, but how do we effectively introduce more positive ways they can grandparent our children when they are together or babysitting for us?"

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy54:51

       Hmm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss54:51

       This question could also apply to someone's partner, right?

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy54:55

        Yeah.

    11. TFTim Ferriss54:55

        If someone reads your book, they think it's fantastic, they want to embrace it, but their partner maybe has a heavy-handed, reactive way of handling things or-

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:06

        Yes

    13. TFTim Ferriss55:06

        ... fill in the blank.

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:07

        They're skeptical.

    15. TFTim Ferriss55:08

        Right. So maybe you could speak to the grandparents-

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:11

        Yes

    17. TFTim Ferriss55:11

        ... and maybe that will also speak to the partner question.

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:14

        Yes

    19. TFTim Ferriss55:14

        Although they're different dynamics.

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:14

        They're probably, they're related and different. The grandparent one is a great one because I think there's a lot to unpack there. So if she was here, I'd first probably ask her questions about what it's like for her to parent in a way that's different from, it seems like what her parents think is right.

    21. TFTim Ferriss55:29

        Mm-hmm.

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:29

        I actually think that's at the core.

    23. TFTim Ferriss55:31

        What it feels like for her.

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:32

        Yeah, what it's like for her. I mean, I think that what happens when you have kids and grandparents are involved is we don't even realize how much unconsciously we're just looking for them to tell us we're doing a good job.

    25. TFTim Ferriss55:43

        Mm.

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:43

        And most parents parent differently than their parents did.

    27. TFTim Ferriss55:46

        Yeah.

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:46

        Most grandparents find that to be almost a criticism of how they parented.

    29. TFTim Ferriss55:51

        Yeah.

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy55:51

        And so they're interested in criticizing their kids almost as a way of making themselves feel better.
17. 59:33 – 1:07:53

    Handling frustration when a child is pushing your buttons.

    1. TFTim Ferriss59:33

       Let me bring up one other question of hers.

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy59:36

       Yep.

    3. TFTim Ferriss59:36

       And I may bring up more, but partially because it also bridges to a question that I had. So this is a question about parenting toddlers.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy59:48

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss59:48

       Could apply to all sorts of ages. "Is it okay to tell my toddler that I'm upset by her behavior? For example, if she's whining and complaining about getting buckled into the car, and I've tried to stay calm, but it goes on for so long that I get frustrated, is it okay to say that I am frustrated by her behavior and I need a break, or what is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language?"

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:00:08

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:00:09

       Okay. Because I was thinking, I was reflecting on the example you gave of the kid jumping on the couch, and I could very easily see myself like, "Okay, I've done the work, done the IFS, got the key to the closet"

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:00:25

       [laughs]

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:00:27

       ... and I go through the routine, right? If I set the boundary, if I walk over there and you're still on the couch, ba, da, da, I'm calm, I'm calm. Then I put them down, they scream their face off. They somehow juke me and get back on the couch. Maybe I do it a second time, but by this point my blood pressure's a little higher. By, like, rep number three, like, there's a point-

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:00:47

        Sure

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:00:48

        ... where if it's, like, rep number 20, like, there's a rep at which anyone will probably kinda break. So I guess my question is, but we can, we can tackle-

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:00:57

        Yeah

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:00:57

        ... I wanna answer her question because she was generous enough to send the questions. All right, like, is it okay to tell my kid that I'm upset, or let me get her language solid. But the broader question-

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:01:09

        Frustrated, I think she said

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:01:10

        ... right. Is it okay to say that I'm frustrated by her behavior and that I need a break, et cetera, et cetera? What is the best response to avoid guilt and shaming language? My broader question is, what do you do Let's say in the jumping on the couch example, when you've done the right thing two or three times and the kid is just hellbent-

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:01:29

        Still being, uh, you know-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:01:30

        Yeah

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:01:30

        ... difficult.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:01:31

        Yeah.

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:01:31

        Yeah. So a couple parts to that question. Number one, there's this thing about, I hear it, I, I've never said it, like, "You can't tell your kids how you feel." There's all these, like, random things people ingest, and I'm like, "I don't even know who said that, but I think I'm not supposed to do it, to not get..." You know?

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:01:44

        [laughs]

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:01:45

        Whenever you're-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:01:45

        The 10 Commandments. [laughs]

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:01:46

        But I would say whenever as a parent you're repeating advice to yourself where you can't even name the person who said that, it's a pretty good [laughs] time to say, like, "I'm not gonna let that take up too much space in my head." You know, if I don't even know the name of the person who I trust enough to let that live-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:01:59

        Yeah, Oscar Wilde

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:02:00

        ... in my head. Exactly.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:02:00

        Abraham Lincoln. [laughs]

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:02:02

        Where I think there's a big difference between saying to your kid, "I'm frustrated. I'm taking a breath. I'm taking a break. I'll be back," and saying, "You make me yell at you."

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:02:14

        Mm-hmm. Sure.

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:02:15

        "Stop doing that. That makes Mommy so sad." The insinuation that we say out loud that your kid, your, your three-year-old, is making you feel something is actually especially toxic for kids who [laughs] you said like you were, who are kind of rebellious, who already kind of struggle because they know, like, "I'm a little more powerful in my family dynamic [laughs] than I should be. People are a little scared of me. And now my parent is confirming that as a three-year-old, I have the power-
18. 1:07:53 – 1:11:33

    Lessons learned from working with eating disorders.

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:07:53

       flight.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:07:54

       This is gonna be a hard left, but-

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:07:55

       Okay, do it

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:07:56

       ... I'm curious how or if any of it will tie in. So you mentioned being a post-doc at one point-

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:08:03

       Mm-hmm

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:08:04

       ... I believe.

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:08:04

       Mm.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:08:05

       And my understanding is you worked with a number of people who had eating disorders. What did you learn from that experience?

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:08:13

       Ugh, I learned so much.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:08:15

        And what were you studying? What were you working on?

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:08:17

        So yeah, I got my PhD from Columbia.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:08:20

        Mm-hmm.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:08:21

        Then my post-doc year I worked with college students and grad students who were students at Columbia, and I did a specialty in the eating disorder kind of group there, so I saw a good number of eating disorder clients. And as someone, I had an eating disorder in high school, and so I think through that, you know, and I'd been in recovery for a while, I also just started to put more pieces together. A couple things I learned: our body [scoffs] has this remarkable a way to act out conflict if we don't kind of understand it and resolve it. I think this is, like, a lot of what anorexia and bulimia are, things that we don't understand, things that live kind of unformulated, we're conflicted about, and the body expresses it in these horrible somatic ways through an eating disorder. Through so many other things, too, but as an example. And this is not true for everyone, but often anorexia is this kind of conflict around your relationship with anger and taking up space in the world. [scoffs] It's, like, kind of amazing. In anorexia you both take up so much space because you get everyone's attention, right? And you take up no space. You shrink into a prepubescent version of yourself. Like, what... D- like, that conflict is being kind of represented in your body, right? I think bulimia, how much can I want? Is it okay to want things for myself? Can I want things? What is my relationship with desire? I actually think anorexia and bulimia have a lot to do with your relationship with wanting and desire, especially as a woman.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:09:55

        Hmm. Is there anything that you took from that experience, questions, lenses, insight, that also transferred over to some of the work that you do now? Or is it sort of looking... I guess leading the witness a bit, but is it, like, looking at the thing below the thing below the thing? Is that what it has in common with what you do now, or are there other things?

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:10:24

        I think yes. The second part of that question, just like what is really underneath people's behavior, that's always really driven me. It's why I became a psychologist. Like, why do good people do things that work against them? Why do good kids act out and lie and do these things? Why do good parents scream and get into these kind of quick fix cycles even though they don't wanna do that? I think I have, again, it's like the curiosity over judgment, always been really curious about that. And then I guess through especially my work with people who are, had intense eating disorders, and this was true when I was in private practice, too, and worked with teens who were really struggling. I think I really understood and saw how desperate they were for, like, a very sturdy leader who could make good decisions when they couldn't, and how they'll say all the things on the surface that make it seem like they can be in control, but really they're deeply struggling and they're deeply in pain, and I think that probably helped me see kids' struggle and pain underneath their disruptive

19. 1:11:33 – 1:15:47

    Managing troublemaker behavior.

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:11:33

       behaviors.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:11:34

       Reflecting back on my own childhood, right, I have [laughs] a younger brother, and the, you know, brothers got up to brother stuff. Like, [laughs] you know, so he would try to get me in trouble or I'd, like, kind of, like, wrestle him and beat him up, and it was, it wasn't, like, malicious necessarily, but there were definitely times when, you know, he'd be screaming like, "Mom, Tim is hitting me," and then she'd run into the room and he'd be in the room by himself. I wouldn't say he was struggling. Like, he was being mischievous, and, like, maybe there's something underneath it, but it seems like kids have this burgeoning sense of agency, and sometimes they're troublemakers [laughs] or, like, do things that they know are wrong. And I'm wondering how you handle some of those situations, because you could try to develop a narrative around, like, the feeling or the pathology underneath it. But I guess maybe at face value, perhaps there are instances where kids are just doing stuff they know is wrong because it's fun or whatever. What do you do in, in those type of instances?

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:12:40

       Yeah.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:12:40

       Or how do you think about them?

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:12:41

       Let's be more specific. Like, your brother's saying, "Tim hit me," but you didn't. Like, he's lying? Is that the situation?

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:12:47

       Sure. I mean, that's an example. I mean, I, it doesn't weigh heavy on my conscience, but-

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:12:50

       Totally

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:12:50

       ... it was annoying.

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:12:51

       Right.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:12:52

        And, like, when I look at his personality as an adult, it's like, yeah, he's playful and kind of a prankster, and-

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:12:57

        Likes to stir the pot?

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:12:58

        Yeah, he likes to stir the pot. He's very, very smart, but I'm like, yeah, it makes sense.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:13:02

        I would say I definitely don't think my approach is about pathologizing things or even always, like, seeing the feeling underneath.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:13:10

        Yeah.

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:13:10

        I actually think what's core is this idea, and I'm gonna say it again, but I, I really think it's so different from how we usually intervene that it is worth repeating, that you have a good kid-

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:13:19

        Mm-hmm

    17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:13:20

        ... underneath whatever is happening there. So okay, why is my good kid stirring the pot, right? My third kid is like this. I mean, the stuff.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:13:30

        [laughs]

    19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:13:31

        And the fact that he's my third, me and my husband always say we delight in him 'cause I think we're less worried. But he will do stuff. Like, "Hey, why do all the bathrooms smell like pee?" And we just knew we should ask him. I just knew I should ask him. This is when he was, like, five. And he literally goes, "Oh. Well, I just thought it would be funny in every bathroom to first pee into the garbage can-

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:13:51

        [laughs]

    21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:13:52

        ... and then dump it into the toilet. That might be why." First of all, I just tried to stop myself from laughing. I'm like, that is actually so funny.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:14:00

        [laughs]

    23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:14:01

        Like, you also didn't tell anyone for days. You just were entertaining yourself. It's just funny. And I go, "Can you not do that anymore?" He's like, "Yeah, no problem," and he never did it again.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:14:09

        Yeah.

    25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:14:09

        Okay. No, I think it's really easy to be like, "What is, like, my kid's a, a psychopath. Like, what are you doing," right? But I think for me, and maybe it's 'cause my third, what did I do?

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:14:19

        Yeah.

    27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:14:19

        I think actually the most underutilized strategy in parenting, and this sounds like a joke, but I do wanna name it to make it official, is doing nothing.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:14:27

        Yeah.

    29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:14:27

        Is doing nothing.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:14:29

        Yeah.
20. 1:15:47 – 1:21:05

    Bad influence intervention.

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:15:47

       for everyone.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:15:47

       I wanna ask a question also from my employee I mentioned earlier, which I was very curious about myself, which is, if your kid is hanging out with other kids who are bad influences, what does an intervention look like?

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:16:08

       Yeah.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:16:08

       And I think my parents actually did a very good job on this with me, but it was simpler in a sense because no smartphones. We were living in a rural area.

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:16:18

       Mm.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:16:18

       So if I wanted to hang out in our little downtown and get into stupid trouble with a bunch of troublemakers, it's actually quite difficult, right? I couldn't [laughs] it was too far away for me to bike.

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:16:28

       Yep. Yep.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:16:28

       And they held the keys to the car, et cetera, et cetera. But they were good with certain things that I hated, like curfews for coming back from, like, hanging out downtown after a movie or something, which was in retrospect very, very smart because a lot of those people ended up in jail, OD'ing, et cetera, et cetera, right? They would not have been good influences. What is the move? What does it look like?

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:16:49

       So I think there's a lot of degrees here, and only a parent listening is saying, okay, when I say bad influence, yeah, like, there's stuff that feels legitimately dangerous. My kid's older. There's, I don't know, there's drugs. There's-

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:16:59

        I could give you a specific example for a younger kid.

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:01

        Great.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:17:02

        Okay. So I noticed when I was a kid, I'm very sensitive to animals.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:09

        Mm.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:17:09

        And there were a few boys who legitimately liked torturing animals. They liked inflicting damage on animals.

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:18

        Yep.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:17:18

        And as far as I'm concerned, that's just [laughs] that is not a good trait. But it's like, okay, so some kid's, you know, fucking with frogs or squirrels or whatever.

    17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:29

        Pee in trash can.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:17:30

        N- uh, no, no.

    19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:31

        [laughs]

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:17:31

        Like, mutilating animals is a step beyond-

    21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:33

        Yeah

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:17:33

        ... peeing in the trash can.

    23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:34

        I would say so.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:17:35

        But that kid is also, like, maybe fine in school, well-behaved, et cetera, et cetera.

    25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:42

        Yeah.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:17:42

        And so you're like, "That kid seems to have zero empathy. That's not even, not even registering on any scale. I don't really want my kid to be around that."

    27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:17:52

        Totally. So let's, again, go degrees. So torturing animals, that's, like, kind of a known concerning trait in a child among psychologists.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:18:00

        Sure.

    29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:18:00

        Right? It's part of, like, a triad, you would say, you know, you know?

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:18:03

        Yeah. Good grooming for-
21. 1:21:05 – 1:27:39

    Cultivating resilience in “deeply feeling” kids (DFKs).

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:21:05

       Well, one thing you said, doing your job doesn't mean taking or exposing your kids to zero risk.

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:21:13

       Yes.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:21:13

       Right? And it [laughs] actually made me think of a friend of mine, different former Special Forces guy, amazing guy. You'd never guess in a million years that... Eh, maybe. No, he- but he's not, like, obvious. He's not in your face. He's more like a gray man, for people who get the lingo. But he has two daughters, and, uh, he's very jovial, fun guy. Like, he's, he's very easygoing. He's as tough as you would expect, but on the surface, like, his interactions are very ... He's actually very soft. But he ended up basically creating this game with his girls where each birthday they have, like, a birthday challenge, and it's something that's hard for them. So for like [laughs] ... And it goes up as they get older. They get to choose, like, their 10 challenges. It's [laughs] kinda like having your employees choose OKRs or whatever. So they got into rock climbing and then into like, "I'm gonna do the cold plunge in the lake for this long, and then I'm gonna do kettlebell swings with this, and this many this, and that and the other thing." So for those people who've ever seen the movie Hanna, he's basically [laughs] training both of his girls to be Hanna, which is like training this guy's daughter, Eric Bana's the actor, to be Jason Bourne. But he has sort of inoculated them against a lot of types of fear by expanding their exposure to all of these different stressors and kind of making a game of it. And they do fail at points, but they get to contend with failure and then recover from it. I'm wondering if you proactively have done that with your own kids or how you facilitate exposing kids to this broad range of emotional experience so that when they get into the quote, unquote, "real world," they're not fragile.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:03

       Yes. Anti-fragility is definitely-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:23:05

       Yeah

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:05

       ... big, big goal. I guess I think that I don't often have to insert that as much as I have to be mindful of not removing it. There's a lot of opportunities for kids to be frustrated, to take on challenges. I mean, we're really talking about feeling uncomfortable.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:23:24

       Right.

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:24

       Right?

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:23:24

       So don't do their job for them.

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:26

        Not doing their job for them and not narrowing the range of their resilience. If my kid is only resilient when they get the job and have an easy project and go to a dinner where all their friends are and get driven there and there's never any traffic, like, they're gonna be in trouble, right?

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:23:40

        [laughs]

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:40

        They're gonna be in a lot of trouble.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:23:41

        Yeah.

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:41

        But we can't expect them to expect anything different if that's kind of been what we create for them during their formative years. So here's a good example. I'll talk about my youngest.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:23:51

        This is the one who pees in the garbage cans?

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:53

        This is my-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:23:54

        I [laughs] like this kid already

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:54

        ... call him my res- my resilient rebel.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:23:56

        I like this kid already. [laughs]

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:23:58

        He is ... Yes, he is something. He really is. He's my kid who wanted to get money to get a certain baseball card-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:24:07

        Yeah

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:24:07

        ... that my oldest son... And he was going to the store, and he didn't have money, and he had two somewhat loose teeth, and he pulled them both out-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:24:15

        [laughs]

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:24:15

        ... by the end of the day-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:24:16

        [laughs]

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:24:18

        ... because he figured he could get money from the Tooth Fairy.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:24:20

        Yeah.

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:24:20

        And he did. And I was like, "Wow."

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:24:22

        Smart kid. Industrious.

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:24:23

        Yes. Uh, very industrious. High tolerance for pain. But I think he wanted to play sports, and he's my third-
22. 1:27:39 – 1:31:23

    The trials and errors that birthed Good Inside.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:27:39

       Have you had any personal sort of parenting slips that you learned a lot from? Because one of the questions I often ask, so I'm force-fitting it a little bit here, but it might work, is, like, do you have a favorite failure?

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:27:52

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:27:52

       Meaning, like, something that didn't turn out the way you hoped, or it was a miss, whatever, but it ended up teaching you so much that in the long term it was beneficial.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:28:02

       I hear my daughter's voice in this moment saying, "I started Good Inside for you," and the reason she says that-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:28:10

       [laughs]

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:28:11

       ... is because I had my first kid, and at this point I also had my private practice, and my first kid definitely had his meltdowns. He had his difficult moments, but there was something relatively linear, relatively, about his development, where I kind of did the thing. "Okay, ugh, you're so upset. You're gonna figure it out. I'm here with you. No, you can't have that truck. I'm holding it. I'm keeping you safe." And he kind of responded in kind. He would kind of, okay. And then I'd have all these people in my practice saying, "Dr. Becky, like, I'm doing the things you're saying, but I swear they're making everything worse. It's making everything worse. It's not working."

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:28:42

       [laughs]

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:28:43

       And even though I, in general, like curiosity over judgment, in the back of my head I was thinking what anyone would think. Like, "You're just not doing it right. You know?"

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:28:49

       [laughs]

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:28:49

        "You're not doing it right, that's all." But moving on, and then it actually kind of in these sessions would make me have to innovate. I'm like, "Okay, well, that's not working," and I kind of do love problems and thinking through things. I'm like, "Try this. Try this," you know? And then I had my second kid, and I feel like after a year and a half, I remember being like, "I need to call all of those people that I was secretly judging." [laughs] I was like, "Oh my God, I know what you're talking about, because I am watching myself do the thing I was telling you to do when I was doing it with my son, and I'm watching my kid scream," or by the time she was old enough to talk, be like, "Stop talking. I hate you." And I was like, "What are you talking about? I'm being an amazing parent right now."

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:29:28

        Yeah.

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:29:28

        "Why are you saying that?" And I would say for a number of months, I really mean this, it was like a dark, it was a dark place of like, "What is going on, and what is my kid, and why can't I give to her the way I know I can show up for my other one?" And then I feel like after that period, this is usually what happens. I feel overwhelmed, and then I have this thing I say to myself [laughs] when I'm feeling really overwhelmed and, like, full of self-blame and pity where I say, "Okay, Becky, wash yourself in it. Like, fully embrace it. You're horrible. Everything's horrible. Like, go all the way to the extreme." And then I go to sleep, and I say, "And tomorrow I'm gonna turn it into fire," 'cause there's a lot of energy in feeling awful and overwhelmed, and if you can, like, allow yourself to embrace it and not fight it, then I feel like there's a day where you can use all of that for something productive. And I feel like that's what I did. And I started to connect these crazy dots in my head. I was like, "Okay, so there are all these families out there who are telling me the same thing I'm seeing with my kid." These kids, when you try to talk to them about their feelings, even in the best way, they explode. Their meltdowns are, like, animalistic, hissing, growling. I mean, really intense. They act like a caged animal. And then I thought about probably 30% of the adults I was seeing in private practice for really deep therapy, and the struggles they had in adulthood, a lot of fear of abandonment, a lot of emotion dysregulation, a lot of really low self-worth, and it was crazy, Tim. I mean, I was like, "Oh my God." They were all my daughter, and they were all those kids. I saw this whole thing, and it led to this body of work where with the adults I was doing this really deep therapy of kind of going back to some moments and really reworking them in this, like, experiential way, and they would tell me things, I'm not joking, that I would then do with my daughter.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:31:20

        Could you give an example?

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:31:22

        Okay, here's an example.

23. 1:31:23 – 1:38:41

    “Our words are not our wishes. Our words are our fears.”

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:31:23

       So your kid has this meltdown, and some parents listening will be like, "Yeah, my kid has meltdowns." Okay, I'm not talking about the run-of-the-mill meltdown. I am talking about it truly-

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:31:32

       The Exorcist.

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:31:33

       The Exorcist. It's animalistic.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:31:34

       [laughs]

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:31:35

       Because these kids, and I call them deeply feeling kids, they experience their feelings as threats. And so if your feeling is a threat in your own body, think about what you would do to get rid of it. You have to, like, expel it onto someone. And they're so porous to the world that they get overwhelmed more easily, and they fear being overwhelmed, and then they fear they're gonna overwhelm you. And basically with these kids, their shame sits so close to their vulnerability. So whenever they feel vulnerable, shame makes it explosive. And then when you try to get close, like, "Hey, I'm here for you," or, "Hey, you're mad," it's too close. They actually do, it sounds [laughs] so existential, but they fear that they are toxic, and then they will kind of make you toxic. And so they say things like, "Get out. I hate you. Leave me alone." And then as parents, we kind of take the bait. "Fine, I'm just trying to help." And then we leave these kids alone. They're completely 10 out of 10 dysregulated, and then they basically learn, "See, I really am as bad and toxic as I worried I was." And we see this all the time in adulthood-

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:32:35

       Yeah

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:32:35

       ... [laughs] act itself out. This is a good example of what came from this most amazing adult I worked with forever. And w- we went back to this moment in her childhood where, again, she'd be in her room, because these kids would be in their room and they're out of control, screaming at a parent, like, "Get out." And kids are oriented by attachment, which is a system of proximity. So when they say, "Get out," not calmly. We all say, "Get out," and someone's like, "Sure, I'll get out." But they are, like, not in a place to be making a good decision. What they're really saying is, "I'm so terrified I'm gonna terrify you, and I'm so terrified, therefore I'm bad. 'Cause if I terrify you so much that you can't even be near me, I'm a vulnerable kid. That basically means I'm not gonna survive, 'cause I need your attachment to survive." And I remember going through, like, what she needed in that moment, and I remember kind of going through this visual of this wise adult being in her room with her, staying even though she screamed, "Get out." 'Cause I always say with deeply feeling kids, when they're in that 10 out of 10 state, their words are not their wishes, they're their fears.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:33:31

       Hmm.

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:33:32

       Honestly, all of us, most of us.

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:33:34

        That's a really interesting reframe. Can you say that one more time?

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:33:36

        When we're completely out of control and overwhelmed, and we scream things out in that state, our words are not our wishes, our words are our fears.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:33:45

        Mm-hmm.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:33:46

        And I think even the visual, if you have a kid like this, what they're screaming, they're actually screaming to their feelings, not to you. "Get out. Leave me alone." I have the chills. Like, they're not talking to a parent, they're talking to these, like, terrifying sensations in their body. So we went through this, this visual, and I'm in the room kind of, like, visually with her.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:34:05

        And you're doing this with your client?

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:34:07

        This is an adult.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:34:08

        Yeah.

    17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:34:08

        Exactly.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:34:08

        Adult client.

    19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:34:08

        This is why it helped me so much with deeply feeling kids. One of the things, I'm just giving you one example. And I was like, okay, so I don't remember if it was her mom or just some sturdy adult who wasn't seeming scared of her. And I said, "So she's standing at the door with you." And I remember this woman saying, "She's not standing. She has to be sitting." And I kind of explored that in the imagery, and she goes, "If she's standing, I, I just believe she's about to leave. I don't believe she's committed to this." So she was sitting at the door. And I'm like, okay, so she's sitting at the door. And this goes into so much more about deeply feeling kids, but in these moments they need containment. They literally need to be with you in a smaller space because they're so fearful of how their feelings come out of them and take up all the space, that they need to essentially have us hold space with them. Like, your feelings only go this far, and I'm sitting with you at the door because I'm, I would never let you kill both of us, so my sitting here with you [laughs] is almost a way of saying, "You are not so bad and awful and toxic after all, and if I can not be scared of this, one day you will not." And every fucking time when you do this, and it's more details than just this, your kid will end by crawling over to you like a dog and coming into your lap for a hug, because that's exactly what they need. But that idea that you can't even be standing, I kind of knew in these moments she was screaming, "Get out," I was like, "You're not in a place to be making good decisions for yourself." It would be like if my kid was trying to cross New York City street completely out of control, like, "Don't. Hold my hand." [laughs] I'd be like, "Yeah, your words are not... Like, I'm not... You're about to die in oncoming traffic. Like, there's something deeper. I'm gonna hold you." And I knew I had to be in the room, but I remember as soon as my client told me this thing about sitting down, I remember with my own daughter and talking to clients, I had all these clients at the time who had these kids, 'cause I was kind of getting these referrals from these kids labeled as oppositional defiant disorder, difficult, dramatic, all of these diagnoses. I was like, wow, oppositional defiant disorder. You cannot like a child who you label as oppositional defiant.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:36:09

        Yeah.

    21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:36:10

        And we were all trying these things, and everyone at the same time was like the sitting down and kind of imagining yourself in this just really sturdy way, it shortened the meltdown by, like, 90%.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:36:21

        Hmm.

    23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:36:22

        Right? And again, that, it came directly [laughs] from my work with... I think so many of my best interventions come from actually the work I did with adults, understanding what adults needed and kind of, when they were kids, and reverse engineering that to today's parents.

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:36:37

        Fascinating example. And I can envision it, and I can see it working. I mean, I, I suppose I've used different words for it, but a friend of mine [laughs] recently recommended a book to me which was something like The Highly Sensitive Person or something like that.

    25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:36:52

        Yeah.

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:36:52

        Because what I say to people for myself, and I was like this as a kid, too, is like my senses are very, very sensitive.

    27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:36:58

        Mm-hmm.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:36:59

        Very porous, and it can be incredibly overwhelming sometimes.

    29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:37:04

        Yes.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:37:04

        And I've become better at using that and managing it, but as a kid, I mean, forget about it. Different story.
24. 1:38:41 – 1:46:47

    Billboard messages and mantras.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:38:41

       stuff. If you could put, metaphorically speaking, a message on a billboard, could be-

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:38:46

       Hmm

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:38:46

       ... a quote, could be an image, anything non-commercial, just something to get out to very large number of people. Could be a reminder, a request, anything, mantra that you find useful, anything at all, what might you put?

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:04

       Can I pick more than one?

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:39:05

       Of course.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:05

       Not on the same billboard.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:39:06

       Mm-hmm.

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:06

       I don't know about the branding of all them at once, but I-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:39:08

       [laughs]

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:09

        ... I have too many, I have too many things, so.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:39:10

        Yeah. Yeah, you can definitely have a couple.

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:12

        Okay. So I'm gonna start with one that's probably most linked to our conversation so far, just my ultimate mantra [laughs] . This feels hard because it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:39:23

        Hmm.

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:24

        And again, to me, the idea that we struggle and it doesn't mean it's our fault is life-changing. I put that... I remember during COVID when my kids were doing work, and like work from home, you know, when they were like in school at home, that was the thing I put on their desks, and I think when you're talking about kids working on math or learning how to read or doing a puzzle or doing something at work or managing your first conflict in your romantic relationship-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:39:46

        Did you put on their desk like a placard or like a little dry erase board or little Post-It note?

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:51

        I took a Post-It note and wrote it messily and just put it up there.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:39:54

        And say it one more time.

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:39:55

        This feels hard because it is hard, not because I'm doing something wrong. The difference between understanding something's hard because it is versus thinking it's hard because basically you failed has massive life implications on what we'd be willing to take on next as a challenge. Like, yeah, that's just a hard math problem. If it feels hard, that's 'cause you're doing it right.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:40:13

        Yeah.

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:40:13

        'Cause it's supposed to be hard. Oh, I'm doing it right versus I'm not good at math. I mean, it's just remarkable-

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:40:18

        Yeah

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:40:18

        ... especially academically when kids are young, how that, how powerful that is. If I could put something different on a billboard, or if I have like, um, you're gonna be s-

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:40:25

        You have, you have inf-

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:40:25

        You're sponsoring many branding campaigns. I'm gonna come to you

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:40:27

        ... you have infinite billboard budget. Yeah.

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:40:28

        Okay. It would be one of two things. This is like different versions of a similar idea. Parenting doesn't come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally is how you were parented.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:40:39

        Hmm.

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:40:40

        Or, we were never meant to parent on instinct alone. The whole idea of maternal instinct has had a profound impact on parents, profound and awful [laughs] . And it's not to say I don't think there's some instinct in us. Obviously, I get that, but it would be like a doctor saying [laughs] , "I didn't go to medical school. I have surgical instinct. I have surgical instinct," and you're like, "Yeah, I'm just not gonna see you."

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:41:01

        [laughs]

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:41:02

        And if your friend said that-
25. 1:46:47 – 1:50:09

    Fan-favorite scripts on saying no, boundaries, and repair.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:46:47

       So you are, and I love this about you, well-known, as I mentioned, for your specific scripts, your word-for-word scripts, even though the intention is to use them to highlight principles. I understand that. What are your most requested?

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:47:04

       Hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:47:04

       The fan favorites, most requested as far as scripts?

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:47:09

       I think what do I do when my kid's having a meltdown that like I just totally don't understand?

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:47:13

       Mm-hmm.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:47:13

       So what do I do when my kid's freaking out about something I don't understand? Anything about boundaries and saying no.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:47:19

       Mm-hmm.

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:47:20

       Right? How do I say no to someone without feeling guilty? How do I say no, you know, to my in-laws when they keep popping over? So anything about saying no and boundaries, and repair.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:47:33

       Repair.

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:47:33

        Yeah, I feel really stuck, and I just, I can't get myself to go to my kid's room [laughs] and say the thing. And yeah, I always feel like a script is like a door opening. Sometimes we need someone to open the door for us, and then when you get in the room, you're like, "Okay, I can do this." But that's kind of what a script can give.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:47:47

        What specific boundary setting or saying no, like within that subcategory, what are the things that tend to come up the most?

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:47:56

        Honestly, almost always when I'm asked a question, my answer is almost always reframing the question. How do I say no without someone getting upset? I mean this with love. It's just a bad question.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:48:07

        It's a bad question, yeah.

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:07

        It's an impossible question.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:48:08

        Yeah.

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:09

        How do I say no and tolerate someone being upset is a great question.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:48:12

        Mm-hmm.

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:12

        Love that question.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:48:13

        Yeah.

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:13

        So I'll shift to that. Usually, when we feel stuck in life, it's 'cause we're asking the wrong questions, right? Not 'cause we don't have the answers.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:48:18

        100%. You can get, also get a great answer to the wrong question-

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:22

        Yes

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:48:22

        ... and that can lead you astray.

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:23

        Right? I always say questions are roads you walk down.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:48:26

        Mm-hmm.

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:27

        You need to make sure the, the road, it's like the destination you wanna end in, not kind of a cliff or something unproductive.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:48:32

        [laughs]

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:33

        And I'll share some of them here just 'cause some of them are-

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:48:34

        Yeah, please

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:48:34

        ... good to put out there. So how do I say no, right? Again, I think saying no well really comes from knowing your why and really being grounded more in your experience than the other person's. The reason it's hard for someone to say no is 'cause they've actually already vacated their body. And if it's me, let's say, you know, here we are on Monday, but let's say you ask me, "Hey, can you do Monday at 3:30?" I'm like, "Oh, I really can't," for whatever reason. "Oh my God, what is Tim gonna think about me? And is Tim gonna be really upset? And what am I gonna say when Tim says that that's the only time?" And you can't say no from that place-
26. 1:50:09 – 1:54:44

    The tennis court metaphor for boundaries.

    1. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:50:09

       One of the ways to think about boundaries and how to actually set them, 'cause there's a lot of people who are like, "I know I wanna set them, but it's the holding, and I just feel so uncomfortable, and my mom's mad at me," or, "My kid's mad at me." Okay. So right now we're sitting on opposite sides of the table, but imagine we're on a tennis court, okay? We're... I'm on one, one side of the court behind the baseline, and you're on the other side. But instead of a net, I don't know, there's like a glass wall, so, like, I could see you, but whatever happens on your side would stay on your side. Okay. The reason boundaries become hard to hold is 'cause I'm on my side setting a boundary. So maybe it's saying to my mom, "Oh, you wanted to come over to see the kids? It doesn't work for us. We have to find another day," right? Or maybe it's saying to my kids, "Ugh, TV time is over," or, "No, sweetie, I- we're here to buy a birthday present for your cousin, but I'm not gonna buy anything else. You know, you see that thing you want." That's my boundary, and on your side is your feelings.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:51:01

       Mm.

    3. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:51:01

       So if you're my mom, you're upset.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:51:03

       Yeah.

    5. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:51:03

       And maybe your version of upset is guilting me. Who knows?

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:51:06

       Guilt. Yeah.

    7. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:51:06

       Right? And maybe if you're my kid in the toy store, you're upset, probably your version is [scoffs] screaming meltdown, or who knows what it is, right?

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:51:12

       Mm-hmm.

    9. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:51:14

       What we say to ourselves all the time is, "I can't set boundaries. I feel so guilty," right?

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:51:19

        Mm-hmm.

    11. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:51:19

        Okay. In my mind, guilt is a feeling you have when you're acting out of alignment with your values. That's why guilt is useful. If I yelled at a taxi on the way home tonight, I would feel guilty because that's not in my values to yell at anyone.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:51:35

        Yeah.

    13. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:51:35

        Definitely not someone trying to help me. That guilt would make me reflect. "Huh, I wonder why I yelled. What could I have done differently?" Useful. But it's interesting when people say, "I set a boundary with my mom because I just need the alone family time, but I feel guilty. I said no to my kid because I don't wanna buy them everything in a toy store, and I feel guilty." It's not guilt. This is actually life-changing. It's not guilt because you're acting in alignment [scoffs] with your values. So then begs the question, what is it? It's our tendency to see other people's distress on their side of the tennis court, and this usually happens in childhood. We learn. We kind of say, "I will take that for you."

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:52:14

        Mm.

    15. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:52:14

        "I will take your upset and bring it to my body and put it in my body to kind of metabolize it for you, and I will call it guilt." But it's not guilt.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:52:24

        Mm.

    17. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:52:25

        It is someone else's feelings that you're feeling for them, and not only is that not good for you, it's actually awful for the other person because if you metabolize, let's say, your kid's feelings for them, they never learn to deal with the stress. You can also never empathize because the only reason I can empathize is if I actually see your feelings as yours. So I actually have to, when I do this exercise in this workshop [laughs] where I'll say to someone, "You have to give that feeling back to its rightful owner." Let's say I take my kid to a toy store, and I say to my friend, "I really do wanna say no to them."

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:52:55

        Mm.

    19. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:52:55

        "But, but I have the money, and I feel so guilty, and even though I wanna say no..." Okay, but now maybe it's not guilt. How do I deal with that? What happens is you're on one side of the tennis court, and there, your kid's frustration, distress kind of starts to come over, and instead of going and hitting against the glass wall and going back to them, which by the way is what you want, you need people's feelings to stay on their side of the court.

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:53:20

        Mm-hmm.

    21. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:53:20

        It kind of comes over to me.

    22. TFTim Ferriss1:53:22

        Mm-hmm.

    23. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:53:22

        And I'm like, "I can't." And what you have to do is actually almost put your hands up-

    24. TFTim Ferriss1:53:25

        Mm

    25. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:53:25

        ... and, like, push it back, and actually the visual is powerful. "That's my kid's feeling," or, "My mom is upset she can't come over. If I actually think about it, that makes sense." I'm allowed to say no, and they're allowed to be upset is, like, a great life mantra. [laughs]

    26. TFTim Ferriss1:53:38

        Yeah.

    27. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:53:38

        They're equally true.

    28. TFTim Ferriss1:53:40

        [laughs]

    29. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:53:40

        No one's a bad person.

    30. TFTim Ferriss1:53:42

        Mm.
27. 1:54:44 – 2:00:53

    Resources and parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:54:44

       We have just a few minutes until our time.

    2. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:54:47

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:54:48

       And I thought I would just open the floor to ask you if there are any things we didn't touch upon that you'd like to mention.

    4. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:54:57

       Hmm.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:54:58

       If there are any requests of my audience, my listeners.

    6. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:55:01

       Hmm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:55:02

       Any reminders, closing thoughts, anything at all-

    8. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:55:05

       Yeah

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:55:05

       ... that you'd like to add, and people can certainly find Good Inside at goodinside.com, and we'll link to all your socials as well. Instagram, Dr. Becky @goodinside-

    10. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:55:16

        Mm-hmm

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:55:16

        ... I believe.

    12. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:55:17

        Mm-hmm.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:55:17

        And we'll put all these in the show notes, of course. The book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want To Be. We'll link to the TED Talk. We will link to all the goodies in the show notes, but is there anything else that you'd like to mention?

    14. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:55:31

        No, I mean, I think that I find learning and reflection to be really such a brave endeavor. I really, really do because if you're thinking about yourself or you're thinking about why we do the things the way we do, or, "Oh, maybe I do wanna intervene differently," like, there's probably someone at this point saying, "Maybe my kid is a deeply feeling kid. Like, should I go learn more about that?" And I feel like that's very brave 'cause to do that, you're going to be confronted by feelings of like, "Oh, shoot, am I gonna do that?" And we all have wondering questions of, "Did I mess my kid up?" Which you didn't, but we wonder it, and then we feel upset. And then to kind of push forward and say like, "Okay, I'm gonna tolerate those feelings in the pursuit of finding something that's gonna end up feeling better to me," I just find, I find it very admirable and increasingly hard to do in today's world. You know, we're all oriented around short-term convenience and gratification.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:56:30

        Mm-hmm.

    16. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:56:30

        And so for anyone listening at this point, I really, I just wanna say thank you. I wanna say, you know, there's probably a lot of tolerance of uncomfortable emotions along the way. There's, there's no one we care about in the world in the way that we care about our kids. We're so invested in it. So thinking about getting support, thinking about taking a workshop or getting a resource, on some level it seems like, well, yeah, it's the person I care the most about, I'm gonna do that. But there is this pull away of like, "Ooh, I, I don't know if I wanna look at something." And so the people who are willing to do that, I just think that's like my type of people, and I love people who are, who can do hard things. So I wanna say thank you. And then the thing I wanna hold right next to that is everything I said today, and I should have said this in the beginning, I myself definitely do not do 100% of the time as a parent. And it really matters to me that people know that, number one, just 'cause it's true and I don't wanna misrepresent myself. But there's no perfect parent. Kids don't need a perfect parent. That would, again, be weird if we set our kid to think that their most important relationships down the road are gonna be with people who are always perfectly attuned to their every feeling and need.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:57:33

        [laughs]

    18. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:57:33

        That would be very counterproductive. And so, again, maybe we end with what we begin with, is the most powerful relationship strategy I believe we have in any relationship is repair. It's our willingness to go back, to take responsibility, to say, "Hey, I wish I handled that differently," to then hopefully actually do a little bit of like the investigation or resourcing we need to actually do it differently. But I, I wanna leave parents and, or any listener with that. There's nothing more powerful than repair. There's nothing more important to get good at as repair, which also means you have to mess up, because the only way you can repair is if you did mess up. And so I just wanna leave people with that more kind of balanced human note, because that's the thing I usually hold onto myself.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:58:18

        And for people who are curious, they wanna explore the world of Good Inside and Dr. Becky Kennedy.

    20. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:58:25

        [laughs]

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:58:27

        Where would you suggest they start in terms of-

    22. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:58:29

        Ooh

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:58:29

        ... like dipping a toe in the water? Let's just for the purpose of applying some constraints, right?

    24. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:58:34

        Yeah.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:58:34

        Somebody who doesn't, maybe they don't have the ability or the financial resources to go to like an extended workshop or something like that.

    26. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:58:41

        Yeah.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:58:41

        Where might they start?

    28. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:58:43

        I'd say go to your local library-

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:58:44

        Mm-hmm

    30. BKDr. Becky Kennedy1:58:44

        ... and kind of request the book if it's not, you know, in. Definitely get on the request list for Good Inside.

Episode duration: 2:01:04